I tip the carriage driver, then turn to the doors of Goblin Market. They pop open for me, which is extremely useful when your hands are full with thrift store loot and you just know your keys are at the very bottom of your lunchbox purse.

As the doors lock behind me, I set the two bags down. Pete puts his book down on the fainting couch.

"So, only one of you?"

"Aren't you going to ask if I'm the good twin or the bad twin?"

"No. Your evil twin has a slightly more ... feral look in her eye."

"Huh. Good to know. She vanished, I don't know why."

Clovis creeps out onto the counter with the antique cash register.

"jili jilli jilli? my jilli? jilli! not other jilli!"

I pick up my Devilbunny and rub noses with him.

"And just how can you tell that?"

"just can. obvious."

I look at Pete. He shrugs.

"No evil twin for you?" I ask.

"Nah. Why bother? One would be grumpy, the other surly", he teases me.

Clovis' ears suddenly zing straight up, thwaping me in the eye.

"What was that in aid of?!"

"edward. edward lost! must go find edward!"

I set my obviously agitated Devilbunny on the counter and look at him.

"Who is Edward?" I ask in a patient tone. If he tells me Edward is a gingerbread minion, I'm not playing along.

"bear. minion bear. lost! in mirror with all the knuts."

"In the ... mirror. Minion bear."

I sigh, then turn to Pete.

"I don't like the sound of 'in a mirror with all the knuts.' I'm gonna run by MiracleMan's, see if he knows anything about mirrors and evil twins."

Pete rolls his eyes. "Probably does. It's probably all his fault. Say hi to Hector for me. Oh, and take the rabbit. He was frantic while you were gone. Annoyingly frantic."

I scoop Clovis back up, give Pete a kiss, and head back out the door. Good thing I didn't have any deliveries scheduled for today.

Pete watches Jilli go and then heads back behind the curtain into his studio.

"Bloody hell. I left it open." Pete heads over to the far wall of his studio where a grandfather clock stands (not ticking, that's too bloody annoying). A slight crack in the wall beside the clock reveals a dark descending stairwell beyond. As Pete starts to push it closed the distant murmor of swearing and moaning can be heard, all in a distinct British accent.

"Quit your whining and get on with it!" he yells down the stairwell. "There's three more to do before next Monday. Get 'em done early and maybe I'll let you play with the PS2."

Pete closes the sliding wall and drops onto a recliner in front of a widescreen TV. The TV simply reads 'Paused'.

"Of course, I'll be buggered if I give you a TV to plug it into though. Heh."

And the day goes by in a blur of video violence...

"No, sorry. Not my fault."

Jilli looks skeptical. I can only shrug.

"I'm serious," I tell her. "It's not me. It's my nemesis who I trapped in a mountain for five hundred years come back to wreak vengeance and give everyone a headache. Or take over the town. Or hog all the nachos and imported beer. Who knows? He's crazy."

"Your nemesis", I repeat. Clovis wiggles his ears.

"So, do you have any guesses as to what your nemesis will next pull out of his bag of tricks? Or are we just winging it?"

I sit down in a convenient chair. Clovis looks up at me.

"edward! find edward!"

"We will, bunny. We will."

So Clovis already knows about Edward, but not where she is. That could be a small problem.

Now it appears that Miracleman isn't going to blast me into little bits- smithereens are so last season- I sit on the couch instead of behind it, and arrange my expansive skirt. It doesn't rival Jilli's, but a girl has to have some pride.

From here, I can see out of the window, to the gutter on the other side of the street. Is it my imagination, or is there a very large spider crawling out?

I crack open a beer and sit opposite Jilli. "We're just winging it. I'm far too tired to hunt him down. He's probably under the city, or opening a stall in the mall or something. Really, it's sort of tiresome. It's always 'hordes of undead' this or 'evil twins from mirrors' that or 'rampaging armies of skeletons' over there. What he should do is something truly nasty like run for political office. I can only thank the gods that he...can't...hear..."

I have forgotten one of the principle rules of being a wizard. Your words can have an affect on reality.

"Crap. What I meant to say was that what he should do is, uh...make all the sewers back up. And, um...fill the streets with, say, tapioca...

"Bugger."

I look over my slightly stained scrolls from Carl's Sandwich and Magic Shop. The election summoning spell is easy enough and Deimos has already collected a TV and a pile of money to sacrifice in the ceremony. Since Carl's was having a buy-one-get-one-free sale I also picked up a curse to hurl at my nemesis. Something called the 'Shatner' curse. Fun will have to wait, I need to get this election summoned.

I begin the chant, a collection of words that is at once bold and noncommital. I finish the change and in a great puff of chads, the election is summoned. Immediately the collection of fiends in nice suits that make up my campaign team are giving me advice, booking interviews with local media outlets, and referring to me as the next Mayor of Sang Sacre.

No, not a spider.

An skeleton made of tapioca.

The jelly-things were disgusting, but this is worse.

"Too late there," I say, as grimly as possible. It's hard to be grim properly when you feel like you're about to vomit again.

Oh dearie dearie me.

I look at Miracleman in horror.

"You didn't just say what I think you did. Please tell me you didn't forget one of the basic rules of magic, and just spoke into being a very nasty idea. Because it sure seems like that's what you just did."

"Now what?" Bob the vampire says, seeing I've gone pale. Paler.

"I feel a trembling in the--"

"Don't finish that, please."

"Well, I do. As if a thousand souls cried out in anguish and then were--forced to vote in an election."

"No! Oh, that is evil."

"We start off with making a case for new leadership." Explains one of my demonic consultants. "We'll point out how under the current mayor the city has nearly been destroyed by the forces of chaos, an army of orcs, hordes of undead and whatnot. We can also bring up the odd rain of frogs and that sort of thing."

"Will the leading-the-orc-army issue come back to me if we run with this?" I ask.

"We can spin that."

"Good. Good. Do I need to have a position on anything. "

The consultant shakes horned head. "No. No. We'll just run negative and just be vague about what your campaign actually stands for."

"Perfect, when do we start?"

"We'll start airing the ads immediately. Then..." The demon's cellphone starts to ring. He takes the call while I use the pause to look over my 'Shatner' curse. Apparently the curse causes the victim's collection of recorded music to be replaced by someone called William Shatner singing the same lyrics. It doesn't sound like a terrible curse but Carl's didn't have a great selection.

"Good news." My demon consultant tells me. "We've got an interview setup with a local TV station at the burned out remains of the Krispy Kreme store. It'll be perfect for a law and order speech."

"I'll need to make a stop to deliver a curse."

The consultant looks at his watch. "Okay, but we need to leave right now."

I head for my mount but the consultant stops me. "Um, we think that a hellish horse-thing sends the wrong message. We've lined up a hybrid car to travel in."

I sigh. I damn well better win this election.